How You Doin', Joey?
Frasier did it after Cheers, Angel did it after Buffy - but can Joey do it without his Friends?

Matt LeBlanc's highly anticipated spin-off series is about to air in the UK on Five - but the lad's still got a lot to live up to after the huge success of Friends.

Matt himself is happy with the role. "When you are lucky enough to find a character that somehow connects with viewers the way they connected with Joey Tribbiani, I think to come back as a completely different character is just asking a lot of an audience," he told Zap2it.

Frasier model

"Obviously, we're following the Frasier model, where a familiar character continues without a break, just in a different context.

"If you look at the arc of Joey's character on Friends vs the other characters on that show, Joey was actually the least-developed character."

Joey's being doing OK for NBC in America, although not as well as Friends. Some 18m viewers tuned in for the premiere back in September, equating to a 24% share of the audience.

TV's black hole

That made it the top-rating show instantly, although it went on to lose around half its audience over the next three months. It IS the top-rating new sitcom on US TV, although that's fairly manageable when there's a dearth of good new programming.

It's a bit of a gamble for Five, who've used Joey to kick off a Sunday comedy night. They paid what is understood to be in the region of £5.5m for Joey and Charlie Sheen comedy Two And A Half Men.

Frasier - a successful spin-off
Spin-offs are not an easy game to play and Joey has the odds stacked against him. Most of them have disappeared into TV's black hole: remember After Mash? Thought not.

Big time

Of course, we wish our simple-minded Friend the best of luck with his show - and there's no reason why Joey shouldn't make the big time.

After all, if Knotts Landing can do it after Dallas, then he's in with a good chance.

And who are we to judge? It's always possible that Joey will become a mega-show - perhaps even bigger than Friends, dare we say it! Then again...bigger than Friends? Maybe not.

slackermonkey

02-10-2005, 11:44 PM

At first, I thought this was a spoiler for an England-themed episode, which would have surprised me. :p

barwars

02-11-2005, 01:38 PM

Nice to see the nod to Frasier.... which this show is definitely modeled after.